Neah Bay: Makah 1

I felt uncomfortably surprised in Neah Bay when my friend openly admitted being put-off by the look of dilapidation and that “these people wouldn’t do anything to better themselves.”  Better than what, I wondered.

Perspective is a funny thing. People can carry around hidden fears and biases, until the moment they are forced to bring their feelings straight to the surface.

Yes, the houses were run down, dogs ran all over town, and many yards had stacks of unwanted stuff lying on the ground. Still, I don’t think what I saw is what she saw. Neah Bay looked the way I thought it would. It’s a reservation. I’ve seen many, and I’ve seen worse. Indian nations are a whole different world. The dilapidation is the encroachment of the “white man”—the usurper. In my mind, I couldn’t think of how it would or should look any different, not after what the Makah have suffered. The European invasion of America demolished nearly everything that resembles native heritage and culture. Why shouldn’t an indian town reflect that.

We pulled into Neah Bay around one thirty, and stopped first at the Museum of the Makah Indian Nation. Our guide, Janine Bowechop, is the executive director of the museum, full-blooded Makah, as articulate as any professor with whom I’ve studied, and damned proud of her blood. I had never heard of the Makah, but I left the museum with overwhelming admiration. Over four thousand years ago, they were created through mythology—given sustenance by the Thunderbird—but they survived with scientific discovery and and engineering prowess. They still do.

They are a people who go head-to-head and toe-to-toe with life everyday. The Makah would not want it any other way. They fish, hunt, and log for survival. What they do defines them, and what they do—what they have done— fills them with pride. Their food does not come in plastic containers from Trader Joe’s. Their trinkets and knick-knacks do not sit idly on shelves, waiting to be dusted when company comes over. What they make for themselves has meaning and use. What they have gotten from the non-Indian lies discarded in heaps in their various yards—stacks of stuff that mean nothing to their heritage and way of life. Only because of changing times do they have to accept or buy into certain things and ideas; it’s hard not to when eighty percent of the vast lands that once marked your home were taken away in the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.

In the old days, they hunted whales from eight-man canoes. One man among the crew would jump onto the back of a harpooned whale, to sew closed the sea mammal’s mouth to ensure it could not submerge and escape. Riding the back of a wounded, albeit angry whale… I’ve never met a bull rider with that kind of intrepidity.

The Makah had to be a strong people. They still are; the land where they dwell, at the northern-most tip of the continental United States, demands it.

Thus, I will not berate them for the appearance of their yards, or their tendency to openly discard those things that the Earth does not provide. They have their own way of life, their own way of thinking, and I have no doubt that they are thinking quite along the same line as what the land needs and asks them to think.

Neah Bay: Makah 2

My friend surprised me again when she would not go into Take Home Fish Company, a dilapidated little shed in the backyard of a run down house owned by Kimm Brown, a full-blooded Makah who put on a pretty good show, until we let on that we knew he was putting on a show, and put on a show of our own.

My wife read about the fish shop in the Oregonian, had put it on her bucket list for whenever we took Trolley to Neah Bay. Because we did not take the ferry to Vancouver Island, Take Home Fish Company rose to the top of the list.

Eight hundred people live in the little fishing village at the edge of the world. It’s not hard to navigate yourself through town. It is hard to find someone home. My wife wanted to visit an art gallery, but it was closed. She had also read about another art shop, which was also closed.

We found Take Home Fish Company easily. My wife and I got out of Trolley and met our friends who had pulled up behind us.

My friend’s wife got out of their RV and stared wide-eyed, her arms folded. “You’re not serious about this?”

“Whadda ya mean?” I asked. “This place can’t have anything but the best catch.”

“I doubt that.”

I pretended not to hear. My wife and our friend followed me toward the decrepit little shanty. We stopped for a moment in the yard to play with the five dogs that were playing together. A girl of about seventeen stepped to the opening of the shed.

“Hello,” she beamed.

I followed her into the dark, rundown little shop marked with a hand painted sign. My wife and our friend followed me. His wife hung back, would not step foot in “such a dump.”

Brown stepped out from a closet at the back of the shed. “Look what I found,” he hollered, holding up a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, an illegal item on the reservation. The label was nearly worn from the glass.

“Knock it off,” laughed a girl behind a make-shift counter. “These people want to buy.”

”They can buy all they want. We don’t have anything. Tell ‘em to go home, or send ’em out fishing. I’ll give ‘em the key to my boat.” He plopped down in a chair near the open door, of which there was no door. “Sorry, but we had a run on fish earlier. You get what’s left, unless you want to stay over and get what I may or may not catch tomorrow, if I even want to catch anything at all. Fishin’… just too damned much work.”

He pointed to a plastic Coleman cooler. I opened the lid and looked at three vacuum-sealed packages of smoked salmon, and one package of halibut.

“How much for the Halibut?” I asked.

“Twenty five bucks, American,” replied the girl.

“Double if you’re not from Canada,” quipped Brown.

“How much for the Salmon?” asked my friend. His wife peaked one eye inside the shed.

“You know,” said Kimm, “I don’t do math very good. Messed up my head with drugs when I was a kid. Cocaine, you know, was my drug of choice. Oh I miss that stuff.”

“Dad,” hissed the girl.

“Acid was my drug of choice,” I countered.

“Sugar cubes,” added my friend.

“Blue dots,” I insisted.

Brown laughed. “Tell you what. You want the salmon? How much you give me?”

“Sixty bucks for the fish and the vintage Mike’s Hard Lemonade.”

“Vintage,” he yelped. “Just bought it yesterday from a fella who looks like you.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I laughed. “He’s my evil twin brother. Stole the first bottle of liquor I ever bought for myself and came up here and sold it to you. Tell you what, skip the fish; how much for the Mike’s?”

“Oh you devil,” laughed Brown, winking at me. “Tell you what. For you, three salmon for forty, and I keep the booze.”

Later that night, during our usual evening of pinochle, My wife, our friend, and I shared one pack of Kimm Brown’s salmon. The three of us stared at each other, nearly with tears in our eyes. We had never tasted salmon done so well. I will make trips to Neah Bay specifically to purchase smoked salmon from Take Home Fish Company.

Sadly, my friend’s wife refused all offers to share such a joy.

Neah Bay: Makah 3

We pulled out from Take Home Fish Company, headed to Cape Flattery Road at the edge of town, four blocks away. Seven miles later, along the base of  Bahokus Peak, we reached the edge of the world.

Cape Flattery is a place that cannot be revealed by or translated into words. Even photographs do not display an accurate account. To get an idea of the power held within the land, one must experience Cape Flattery firsthand.

From the parking lot of the park we walked perhaps three quarters of a mile, often along a boardwalk of cedar planks, identical to the wooden path we took at Ozette.

Eight hundred feet from the actual point, a side-trail ended at a cliff, which overlooked a small cove guarded by tremendous rock formations and lush sea stacks. I do not know how long I stood mesmerized, but after some time I realized that my wife and my friend were no longer with me.

I met up with my friend at a lookout point just below the main observation platform. He had disappeared into the landscape in much the way I had just a few moments before. My wife had climbed onto the platform. She did not notice I had arrived.

I have traveled to all forty-eight continental United States of America, have seen more than my share of stunning places. Cape Flattery has taken over my dreams, and for the first time in over twenty-five years, I wake up and remember what I have dreamed.

Standing on the wooden outlook of the point, I wanted to hold my breath in wonder, but the power of the place only allows the body to feel the way it should. I could not feel the weight of myself, did not wince with arthritic pain as I leaned over this rail and that one to gape at the life happening where the Pacific Ocean folds into the waters of the Juan De Fuca Strait—puffin, cormorant, gulls, guillemots, sea lions, dolphins, and the dorsal of an orca… Sitka spruce, Cape primrose, cedar, hemlock… . Fog coming from the west blocked my view of Tatoosh Island, the home of the Cape Flattery Lighthouse, just seven hundred eighty-seven feet away. It didn’t matter. The cove off to my right basked in sunlight, with more sound, smells, and movement than I could fathom in a lifetime. It shone in direct contrast to what I would see of western Washington in three days time.

For a moment, I got the idea that if I jumped from the head, I would forever become a part of this place. Cape Flattery and I would be one-and-the-same. But my sanity reminded me that a jumper would cause too much commotion, and a lot of people would be either sad or pissed. I decided not to muck up such a beautiful place with an act of human folly. Besides, nothing lasts forever. One of these days, eternity will reclaim the beauty that it placed for a brief moment in our little corner of the universe, and Cape Flattery will return to the cosmos from whence it was borne.

In the meantime, I will sit with the joy of experiencing such a place. And when I’m not sitting, I will think of all the ways that I can return until I am reclaimed by eternity.

We spent so much time at Cape Flattery, that we did not arrive in Sekiu to camp until after sundown.

Ozette Lake

My wife and I walked a half-mile trail along the hill above Elwha Campground (illegally taking our pups*). We wanted to take a six-mile loop after breakfast, but by the time our pals rose from bed, ate, and we had walked our dogs, the morning disappeared. We wanted to make Neah Bay with enough time to explore the northwestern most tip of the United States.

Halfway along our western route on Highway 101, we ran into a road construction delay, Ten miles later, turning onto Highway 113, we ran into three more road delays. By the time we reached highway 112, we decided that we did not have enough time to reach Neah Bay and explore all that we wanted, so we opted for an early camping destination.

We took the Ozette Lake Campground turnoff, and within a mile began to wonder whether we had made a mistake with our choice of destination. The road roughed up our tires, and the never-ending tight bends and slow turns churned our stomachs. We discussed turning back to look for somewhere else to park our motorhomes for the night, but a big body of water suddenly gleamed like a jewel through the trees. We were back in Olympic National Park.

The campground, not modern, yet not primitive, was clean and roomy. Navigating the grounds was like walking through a park, and we found a flat site that accommodated both motorhomes.

Within fifteen minutes after our arrival, our friends were swimming in the cold waters of Ozette Lake. My wife and I chatted with kayakers, fishermen, and campers from as far away as Norway, Texas, and Nevada.

After the swim, we took the three-mile walk through a hemlock forest. The path, most of the way, was a “boardwalk” made of planks cut from driftwood. The novelty of the path and the beauty of the forest kept us from realizing we had walked for fifty minutes to reach the Pacific Ocean.

Coming out of the trees, the ocean vista was nothing we expected. Clusters of sea stacks rose out of the Pacific. Clusters of rock pads lined the shoreline, just twenty feet beyond the water’s edge. Several seal lions hunted for food just fifty yards out, and several whale spouts billowed from the water not much farther away. Above us, two bald eagles circled for several minutes to scan the beach activity.

Though tired, we did not complain about the fifty-minute walk back to camp.

We had no idea what we would learn about the lake on the morrow.

*—Unlike parks in Oregon, dogs are not allowed on the trails of National Parks in Washington.

Elwah Campground

Funny how distance and time can change a perspective. My wife and I always stood awestruck among the coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), thought we had never seen—or would ever see—forests as beautiful as those in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Olympic National Park changed our thinking.

Originally, we intended to stay in Port Townsend at the Point Hudson RV Park, and then take a ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria and explore Vancouver Island, Canada, but at boarding time our friends balked, so we remained in our own country and ventured into the Olympic National Park.

Just before a small speck-of-nothing-town called Elwha, we turned onto Olympic Hot Springs Road, which ambles through a dense forest of Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock.

My wife gasped. “This is what I always thought forests looked like in the Pacific Northwest.”

We stopped often along the road, and got out to gaze at the forest. Elwha enchanted us.

Undoubtedly, faeries, pixies, sprites, brownies, trolls, and the like inhabited the Elwha Valley. We love the redwood forests, but the temperate rain forests of Washington rendered us speechless.

Sadly, though, in the same way that Northern California forests and the mountains of Oregon are chipped and scarred by massive clearcuts, the lush forests of the Olympic Peninsula are surrounded by areas blighted by chainsaws and bulldozers.

Trees supply so much of our oxygen, and yet we cut them down the way chain-smokers rifle through packs of cigarettes. We’re cutting off our air supply.

Maybe we won’t nuke ourselves off the planet, or become extinct from climate change. Maybe we’ll suffocate.